OUR APPROACH

INVESTING IN RESILIENCE. REINVESTING IN COMMUNITIES.

The re:focus approach is based on the idea that designing new types of projects—not just building or funding more of the same—is essential. By crafting large-scale solutions that generate multiple benefits and revenue opportunities, re:focus aims to leverage public funding for infrastructure and attract additional private financing, even in areas where traditional projects face significant barriers to implementation.

We work directly with cities, investors, engineering firms and other stakeholders to design and finance modern infrastructure solutions that have sound financial returns and economic, social, and environmental integrity for the communities they serve. Working with a wide-range of partners from many different sectors, we look for systemic policy or infrastructure gaps where large-scale integrated solutions can create new private investment potential and public value.

In all cases, re:focus seeks to creatively align people and resources to solve major resilience challenges.

OUR VALUES

Focus

Our team is focused on results. We identify targets of opportunity for new public-private partnerships around core infrastructure needs in cities and critical sectors. Based on our policy experience, we look for key “forcing events” that can drive large-scale change and investment in building real integrated resilience solutions on the ground. All of our work focuses on creating both short-term political wins and long-term value.

At re:focus everything we do involves collaboration. No one has all the answers to every problem, so we actively seek out diverse partners and incorporate new people, disciplines, and methods into our work as our projects evolve. Our network of collaborators currently includes engineers, lawyers, urban planners, investment bankers, policy experts and a wide range of multidisciplinary loose cannons.

We work hard at re:focus to serve as connectors and ambassadors between traditional silos. Our philosophy of leadership is about creatively aligning people and resources to solve really big problems. We believe that leadership is a constant process of listening, learning, and experimenting to maintain that alignment over time. A big part of what we do is create safe spaces for diverse stakeholders (even competitors) to contribute ideas, work together, and find new ways to solve seemingly intractable challenges until we get to a workable solution.

Change is hard. Change in the public sector is harder. One important thing we try to avoid at re:focus is making a future problem or benefit more important than a community’s current priorities. Lots of experts in fields from behavioral economics to psychology and health care know that people everywhere struggle to make decisions that have benefits in the distant future. Instead, we look for where stakeholders in a system are suffering or losing money today—for example, talking about the costs of current local flooding instead of future climate changes—since these same systems are likely to be the first to fail or worst off in future. Our priority is finding solutions that create the greatest public value in the short term and the long run.

We hold ourselves to the highest personal standards of honesty and transparency. We pride ourselves on listening to our clients’ challenges and priorities and using that information to recommend design and finance solutions that are effective, practical, and have integrity for the communities they serve.

Did we mention that we are a b-corp and a federally certified woman and minority-owned small business? That too.

OUR GOALS

Success in resilience is often something that doesn’t happen. The storm hit but the community wasn’t flooded. For our team at re:focus, we measure our success against the following goals:

Ease the burden on governments at all levels

by bringing together innovative teams of public and private sector experts to solve problems.

Mobilize new resources to protect communities

by better aligning public resources and leveraging new private investment.

Increase the resilience of vulnerable populations

by taking a systems approach to infrastructure predevelopment, delivery, and investment.

Improve integrated planning capacity at the local level

by creating replicable templates for cross-sector design and project implementation.

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In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.

— Yogi Berra (attributed)